


Continuing acts of domesticity

by josephides



Series: Birds, Beasts, and Relatives [2]
Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M, Gen, it's just supposed to be cute ok?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28773687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: Thanksgiving tended to be a smaller affair, Bran picking at his food like it had personally offended him and Leah drinking a lot of wine. Christmas, however, was a different matter. It was literally like the entire pack went into full North Pole mode.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Series: Birds, Beasts, and Relatives [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109591
Comments: 18
Kudos: 102





	Continuing acts of domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> Would have been good if I'd managed to publish this at Christmas, wouldn't it?
> 
> Also - Bobby gave up trying to get everyone to call him 'Roberto'. He decided he'd try again when he went to college.

Bobby rolled out of bed to the smell of bacon and followed his nose down the hall, still half asleep and wearing his pajamas. He wasn’t the only one. Kara emerged from her room in what was her vacation uniform of an oversized hooded sweatshirt over leggings, her hair up in a lopsided ponytail and big fluffy socks. There were sleep marks on her cheek.

They greeted each other in the manner of most teenagers – a grunt and a slight jerk of their head to acknowledge existence – and trudged downstairs to the kitchen, where Bran and Leah were milling around, cooking, shuffling pans and dishes filled with the delicious scent of _breakfast_.

Bobby headed straight for the plate of bacon in the center of the table. Bacon was his weakness. If he could have it with every meal, he would.

“Told you,” Leah said to Bran, smirking. “Don’t you _dare,_ Bobby. Get a plate.”

With admirable timing, Kara presented him with one and Bobby shuffled into the booth, picking up bacon with his fingers. “Hot, hot, hot,” he muttered, nonetheless cramming a piece into his mouth. 

Expression blank, Bran placed a platter of pancakes in front of them and then Leah slid some homemade apple compote down, as well as the maple syrup. Sausage followed shortly after that and scrambled eggs and little fried potatoes.

As Bobby crunched down bacon, he started to smell something. Something suspicious, something—

“Okay, what do you want?” Kara asked, catching up faster than he. She had a mouthful of sausage and potato poised on her fork and her eyes were narrowed.

“Us? Nothing more than a nice family breakfast,” Leah said, slipping in beside her, her big blue eyes wide and innocent.

It was, Bobby knew, absolute horseshit. He put down his fork. “All right. What is it?”

Bran took his own seat, effectively trapping Bobby in. He affected a look of confusion and began to help himself to sausage and eggs. “I’m sure we don’t know what you mean. Could you pass the hot sauce?”

Family breakfast. Bobby glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s nearly 2pm,” he pointed out. Late for breakfast, come to think of it. Late in general. He could have _sworn_ he woke up at nine and that was, like, ten minutes ago.

“Is it?” Leah asked, sipping her orange juice and handing Bran the hot sauce from the counter. “Already?”

“Doesn’t time fly,” Bran mused, smiling his thanks.

Kara rolled her eyes at Bobby so hard they might have rolled out of her head. “I’ve been up since eight.”

That might well have been true, were it not for the sleep marks on her face.

Bobby looked at his aunt, pouring sugar into her coffee. She was smiling slightly. “So, what, breakfast was to lure us down?”

He had to admire the effort. It also explained the sheer quantity of bacon. Bobby’s stomach rumbled. He ate some potatoes. Mmm. Paprika.

“Your aunt missed the pleasure of your company.”

“Coulda _texted_ us that,” Kara muttered, scooping up more potatoes with her fork.

*

The day before Christmas Eve – Christmas _Eve_ Eve as Sam insisted on calling it, walking around the town like he was Santa’s Little Helper - Bobby accidentally called Leah ‘mom’ again.

He couldn’t tell who was more mortified – himself or Leah. Like last time, Leah’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy and Bobby’s face went so hot his eyes watered. This time he was trapped, hands in a bowl of the alcohol soaked fruits that were about to go into the mince pie casings Leah was finessing. There would be no subtle way to escape this situation.

It was agony.

Leah pressed her lips together. “Just a teaspoon in each. We don’t want them to be overfilled,” she said, handing him a teaspoon.

“Okay,” he squeaked.

Silently they filled the little pies, the elephant of Bobby’s misplaced familial affection prancing around them. Carefully, Leah laid little pastry stars on top of the filling. There were four trays. One went to rest by the stove to be cooked later for just the family, the other three were put in the refrigerator for the Christmas party tomorrow.

“I don’t mind it,” Leah said suddenly, very quickly, vigorously washing her hands.

Bobby, who had been grateful that his blush had started to fade, felt it crawl back up his face. “Okay,” he said, again, disappointingly, squeaking.

After they cleared up, Leah gave him a small smile and then scurried down the hall to Bran’s office, obviously to escape him. He did the same, heading to his bedroom so he could lie face down into his pillow and wallow.

Kara’s door was open, unusually, as he passed. She was lying in the big beanbag that had been bought for her to take to college, on her cell, like always. He stopped. They stared at each other, eyes narrowed. Then he leaned in and turned off the light, plunging the room into darkness.

“Mama’s boy,” she said, blue light from her cell phone lighting up all her wolfy teeth.

“Ugh!”

*

Bobby had very vague memories of finding Christmas in Aspen Creek somewhat overwhelming the first time. Part of that was because, for the first few months after he had arrived, Bran had requested that the pack limit their visits to the main house as once Bobby had started to grow he’d got a little bit more _witchy_ and did things like accidentally start fires. By the time the holiday season arrived, and Bran had taught Bobby a little control, that rule had gone and Bobby found his hair being ruffled by a variety of highly terrifying werewolves and getting comments like _Haven’t you grown, Bobby? How fast can you run? Do you know how to skin a rabbit?_

They actually didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, either, so it wasn’t like there was a gentle easing in to the festivities. There was a ceremony in October that made everyone pretty gloomy and so Thanksgiving tended to be a smaller affair, Bran picking at his food like it had personally offended him and Leah drinking a lot of wine. _Christmas_ , however, was a different matter. It was literally like the entire pack went into full North Pole mode.

“How many hats do you have?” he remembered asking Tag that first Christmas, the fourth day he had emerged in a different festive creation. This one was a large, felt turkey, complete with its own little Christmas hat. It was obviously quite old, the stuffing poking out of its fluffy rear, and one eye was dangling on a thread.

“Not sure,” Tag said thoughtfully, chewing on a slice of jerky. “I’ve a box in the loft.”

They spent _three days_ decorating the main house, indoors and outdoors. There were four real Christmas trees inside. One in Bran’s office, one in the hall upstairs, one in Bobby’s bedroom – Leah insisted – and the massive, massive one in the living area, where the pack tended to congregate.

“It’s practically the size of the Rockefeller one,” Kara whispered to him as they stood in front of this creation, looking up at it in awe as Leah dangled from the ceiling beams like an acrobat, putting on the lights.

There really was nothing for it but to go with the flow and by the time Bobby was sixteen, he didn’t just join in, he fully embraced it. He started planning his Christmas presents in March. He spent his own allowance on tree decorations. He sent Leah links to fairy lights with helpful suggestions – _What about these for the front porch? They have eighty different lighting modes!_

He was – low key – in a festive hat war with Tag.

“That’s nice,” Tag said casually, eyeing the antlers perched on Bobby’s head.

Slowly, Bobby reached up and pinched the tip of one. They immediately lit up and started playing _Silent Night._ Tag’s eyes darkened with envy. Bobby smiled, smugly. “Thanks.”

The culmination of the Marrok Christmas celebrations was the Christmas Eve party. All the pack and their extended families would descend upon the big house. There would be food, there would be eggnog, there would be mulled cider and wine, there would be a carefully contained bonfire and a snowman competition which typically turned into a snowball fight. Every child left with a goodie bag and a present.

This year, Kara and Bobby were in charge of the goodie bags. After a brief discussion, Kara made herself responsible for the ‘styling’ of the bag itself – she had a Pinterest board that Leah had approved – and Bobby had bought the presents to the budget set by Bran. There were eight children in Aspen Creek and two babies. He had stalked these children for three weeks so he could get an idea of what they liked which, it turned out, wasn’t hard as it was mostly dinosaurs, except for Lucian who was getting another Barbie for his extensive collection.

“Oooh,” Kara said, eyes lighting up when she saw it. She made grabby hands and he passed over the box for her to admire his choice. “Rainbow sparkle _hair_ Barbie. He will _die_.”

“I thought so.” Bobby was particularly proud of this one. His bookmarks were basically fifty different Barbies that he had agonized over before making his final decision.

Bobby set to wrapping the presents and then Kara made a noise. “Where are the chocolate mice?” she asked, going through the mess on the table.

“Oh, they’re in the pantry – I’ll go get them.” He made to stand. 

Kara grabbed his elbow. “I wouldn’t. I can hear Bran and Leah in the kitchen.”

Cool, Bobby thought, sitting back down and grimacing. Useful having a sort-of-sister with enhanced hearing. Last time he’d walked in on Bran and Leah getting busy, he hadn’t been able to look either of them in the eye for a week. There really was nothing more traumatizing than seeing your sort-of-mother being groped by your sort-of-father. He was just grateful they’d still had most of their clothes on.

“Oh, please,” Kara snorted, unknowingly following his train of thought. “You haven’t seen anything yet. I caught them having full-on sex in the shed once.”

Bobby almost curled into himself in horror. “Oh God. What did you do?”

“Screamed and ran away. Leah laughed every time she saw me for weeks afterwards.”

Leah was remarkably blasé about that sort of thing. She’d made Bran give him the sex talk when he was fourteen but she’d sat in the kitchen and shouted out ‘helpful’ advice to Bran when she felt he was missing out key parts. The only positive had been that Bran was possibly more embarrassed about the whole thing than Bobby was. 

“I didn’t have to do this for Sam or Charles,” Bran had muttered resentfully, picking up the banana and the condom packet and looking at them, obviously at a loss.

“It’s okay, Uncle Bran,” Bobby whispered conspiratorially to him, “this is the part they _did_ cover in sex ed.”

“No,” he’d sighed, looking at the back of the condom box, frowning so his sandy eyebrows nearly met in the middle. “She’ll only get more annoyed with me. I see these come in four fun flavors. My goodness, isn’t that something.”

*

At 4.45pm, Leah held a briefing to go through their duties. She pointed at each one of them and they regurgitated the instructions they had been given many, many times.

Bobby was on canapé duty. He was wearing smart slacks and a pale blue button-down. He’d shined his shoes and combed his hair. “First tray at 5.30pm – cold appetizers only. At 6.30pm switch to hot, leaving remaining cold canapés on the coffee table and _only_ on the coffee table so people aren’t tempted to eat elsewhere. At 7pm, put mince pies into the oven to warm. Take out. Dust with powdered sugar. At 7.15pm serve mince pies.”

Leah nodded and moved on to Bran.

“I’m Santa so I’m in charge of giving out the gifts,” Bran said. He narrowed his eyes. “Is there, perhaps, a shawl you would consider wearing?”

Leah put her hand on her hip. “And why is that?”

Kara’s eyes met Bobby’s. _Ohmigod_ , she mouthed. Then they both tried to make themselves invisible through sheer force of will, Kara actively squeezing her eyes shut as if this would help.

Bran gestured, vaguely, to his own chest. “It’s a very… enjoyable dress,” he said, slowly, his eyes dipping to the very deep v of the neckline, “I was just wondering if perhaps you might get cold? And a shawl, a wrap? Perhaps. Might be… nice?”

This suggestion was met with a very frosty silence. “Would you like me to change, Bran,” Leah said after a moment, tapping red-polished nails on her hip. Her tone could have cut glass.

Bran’s head-shake was decisive. “Absolutely not. I personally find this new dress very exciting.” He touched his chest. “And I’m… thrilled… so many of our pack will _also_ get to see you in it.”

There was a moment where it could have gone either way. Leah was glaring at Bran. Bran was glaring right back. In all fairness to his aunt, she didn’t have much in the way of boobs so it wasn’t that the dress was _revealing_ per se, it was just that it showed a lot of skin. And was a bright, festive red which – for werewolves – was kind of a big deal.

It was definitely eye-catching and would probably cause a bit of a stir – which would have entirely been why Leah had chosen it. She liked to be in the spotlight.

“Maybe I could wear a necklace,” Leah said thoughtfully, running a finger down her clavicle.

Bobby practically heard Kara’s eye-roll.

“What a good idea.” Bran swept forward and grabbed her hand, a big smile on his face. “Let’s go choose one.”

Kara saw where this was going before Bobby did, who was naively thinking a piece of jewelry would put them back on track. “Guys, there’s literally _minutes_ until people start to arrive,” she protested as Bran spirited Leah towards the stairs. “You’re supposed to greet them at the door! Bran, you haven’t even put your costume on!”

“Won’t take that long,” Bran replied cheerfully, taking off his T-shirt _as he went up the stairs_. “Really.”

Both teenagers made disgusted noises.

Bobby shook his head. “Werewolves, man,” he said. “Unbelievable.”

*

The weirdest thing was that the rest of the pack thought Bran and Leah didn’t get on. If he had a dollar for every smirk or heavily laden comment about their marriage, he’d be a millionaire by now. When he’d tried to defend them – or deny it - he’d get these patronizing looks, as if he didn’t understand, and some kind of fanciful tale about Bran’s need to ‘protect’ them all from his monster and the great sacrifice he’d made. Admittedly, the last time someone had implied Bran was sacrificing anything by being married to his Aunt Leah, Bobby had set fire to the drapes and that was the last time anyone said anything of the sort of his face.

He supposed from the outside they were a very _different_ couple from most. They weren’t like Anna and Charles, who seemed to be joined at the hip. They didn’t give each other lingering glances or compliments or _cuddle_ , thank God. They were just—

“— super horny for each other,” Kara summarized.

This was accurate. 

“Do you think this is ruining us for any future relationships?” Bobby asked thoughtfully. He’d thought his zombie mom and crazy dad might have done that for him but he’d been watching a lot of Disney to make up for it.

“Not for me.” Kara pilled more of the leftover canapés onto her plate. Not that they had been leftover. There were no ‘leftovers’ at werewolf functions, only the food that they had deliberately hidden. Bobby had learned to guard his meals at all times. “I _expect_ to be super horny for my werewolf husband.”

“What if you fall in love with a human? What if he’s, like, _averagely_ horny for you?”

She gave him a look that was a copy and paste of Leah’s when she was horrified. “That will not happen to me.”

“Thanks,” Bobby grunted.

Kara saluted him with a mini chicken pie. “You’re not really human, remember.”

This was true. He was something in-between. A not-quite-witch and a not-quite-human who lived with werewolves. Bran asked him every year, usually around his birthday which Bobby suspected was when he remembered that Bobby was aging, if he wanted to train as a witch. A white witch, of course. Gentle magic.

“You could finish school in Seattle,” Bran suggested, tossing a tennis ball up in the air as he leaned back in his big leather chair in his office. “Moira could train you.”

Bobby watched the ball flying up and down in precise, repetitive movements. “I like school here.”

“I know.” He stopped tossing the ball in the air. “I let Charles choose not to follow his blood. My blood. Instead he took after his mother. But I’ve always thought— _what if_.”

Leah was blunter. “Bran wants a witch in the pack. Another one,” she amended, taking into account Bran’s sort-of-witchiness and Charles’s whatever-that-was. “Don’t think you owe us anything.”

Bobby blinked at her. He was pretty sure he owed them _everything_.

As if sensing where his thoughts were going, Leah gave him an absolutely furious look. “You do not owe us, _him_ , anything. You are my family. It is my _pleasure_ to care for you,” she said, as if she was swearing at him and not, well, being nice. She clasped his face, just a little too hard, fierce blue eyes penetrating him, every inch of her dominance coming to the fore. “You live your life exactly how you feel is right.”

So, for the time being, Bobby was staying in Aspen Creek. He wanted to finish school. Then college. Though he did put in a call to Moira, whom he had met – probably orchestrated by Bran – several times.

“Oh, it can wait,” Moira assured him in that practical way she did, cutting to the case. “You’re in a singularly lucky position of being in the safest place a witch-born can be. Bran won’t let anything happen to you.”

That was obviously the other worry. Having been at the mercy of a witch one before in his life, he was not really in the mood to experience it again. So perhaps keeping his head down and just being a weird hybrid _something_ was okay for the time being.

*

“Of course,” Kara said thoughtfully, as they watched YouTube videos of a guy in New Zealand who was obsessed with terrapins on the big screen of the TV, “what would be really funny is if you started calling Bran ‘dad’.”

Bobby gave the screen bug eyes. “Thanks for putting that nugget into my sub-conscious.”

“He’d probably love it.”

“ _Kara._ ”

They were home alone. Leah was out with Peggy, who was on day four of her mate being away and was going stir crazy. Bran was somewhere up a mountain communing with a wildling who was having more of a crisis than normal.

They moved on from terrapins to dolphins and from dolphins to sharks. Both Kara and Bobby had an illogical fear of sharks, what with being at least a thousand miles from the nearest one outside of an aquarium. They watched with unfolding horror and then agreed to watch _New Girl_ re-runs to calm down.

“I called Asil ‘dad’ once,” Kara mentioned as Nick and Jess had a meltdown over meeting Prince.

“Wow. How did he take it?”

“I thought he was going to cry.” She grimaced. “I mean, obviously it’s worse.”

“Yeah, you actually _have_ a dad.”

Kara’s dad tried hard, too. He called every Sunday and came for vacations and really tried not to look totally freaked out, even if some of the pack made him sweat around the hairline. Kara’s mom, however, was pretty much out of the picture now. Bran gave a good talk about how they had to be _understanding_ and how her mom might one day _come around_ to the idea of her daughter being a werewolf but Bobby and Leah had pretty much agreed that if they saw Kara’s mom ever again there would be violence.

Bran came home after midnight and leaned over the couch to look at them, slumped on their sides, staring unblinkingly at the screen. “It’s a school night,” he said, with very convincing disapproval, totally ruined by his reaching for a massive handful of popcorn and asking if anyone was hungry. “I’m going to make burgers.”

Burgers and pancakes were pretty much Bran’s entire repertoire of meals. Since Kara was never going to turn down a meal and Bobby was still growing and essentially hollow, they followed Bran into the kitchen. They assumed a similar slumped position at the breakfast bar whilst Bran cooked and talked and generally enacted what Aunt Leah called ‘Show Bran’. He was hilarious and had them laughing hard, firing stories left and right at them, making jokes and pulling faces.

But Bobby’s slow, nighttime brain connected with what Aunt Leah had also said about ‘Show Bran’.

“He’s usually at his brightest when he’s hurting the most,” she’d told him, stroking the hair from his face. It had been just after the first October full moon and though Bobby had been safely tucked away with one of the Aspen Creek human families that night, they’d all heard the howls of despair. But the next day, Bran had been bright eyed and chatty, almost exuberant, bouncing from room to room in the big house until Leah had corralled him upstairs for ‘a nap’.

Something bad must have happened, Bobby realized. He sent Kara a look, wondering if she had noticed it, and she met his eyes with a small, worried nod. She took out her cell phone and Bobby guessed she was probably messaging Leah to come back soon.

Slowly – because an unhappy werewolf was not necessarily an in-control werewolf – Bobby slid off his seat. He approached the stove where Bran was flipping burgers and Bran turned to give him a big smile. “Cheese?” he asked. “Or bacon? Or both? I’m going to have both.”

It was amazing, Bobby thought, admiringly. If he didn’t know Bran, he’d have seen a young guy, bright eyed and smiling. Not a care in the world. But there was an edge to Bran’s eyes and a funny kind of tension to the way he was standing.

Bobby chewed his lip, pondering his next move. Werewolves were a tactile species. He'd often seen them, when they were in their wolf forms, piled on top of each other in the yard or on the couches indoors. When the pack were in human form, they'd squeeze onto those same couches together, arms and legs all over each other, not caring who was in whose personal space. And his Aunt Leah hugged _him_ all the time. She was embarrassing about it and would often claim she was just making up for lost time and she was stronger than him so he just had to take it.

So, the most important thing he had learned from her hugs was to be firm. To commit.

With a deep breath, Bobby flung his arms about his uncle and squeezed him hard. He also squeezed his eyes shut because he’d never hugged Bran before and maybe he had got this wrong, maybe Bran didn’t want this, didn’t need this from him. He was the Marrok after all and was probably above this sort of thing. His problems were bigger, world-threatening, they couldn't be solved by a simple hug, was he insane? He felt his cheeks burn with mortification. But Kara’s bar stool squeaked as she jumped off it and then he felt her wrap her arms around Bran from behind, fingers digging into Bobby’s back. Her forehead touched Bobby’s, reassuring him with her presence. Bobby felt a wave of love for her, his almost-sister, his friend.

Between them, Bran suddenly sighed and it was as if he shrunk with that sigh, all the energy and hot air from before bleeding into the ether. There was a clatter of the metal spatula onto the counter and then one of Bran’s hands gripped Bobby’s sweater tight.

They stood for a long time, long enough that Kara turned off the heat on the stove, long enough that they heard the front door open and close. Aunt Leah padded into the kitchen, stood in the doorway for a moment, just in the corner of Bobby's eye, and without a word began to make up the burgers, slicing buns and chopping lettuce, moving around them as if it wasn't a strange thing, a three-person hug in the middle of her kitchen. Then she wiped her hands on a dish towel and cleared her throat.

“Sit down and eat something, Bran, so the children can go to bed. They have school in the morning,” she said quietly, putting the plate on the table.

Bobby and Kara stepped back, untangling themselves, and, his smile about a tenth as bright as before but a hundred times more real, Bran hopped up onto a stool. “What nice children we’ve got,” he murmured, almost to himself.

"That's very true." Leah shooed them off, quietly, mouthing ‘thank you’ as she did so.

They made their way through the living room, soberly, hearing the murmurs of a conversation begin behind them, and started climbing the stairs side by side, each lost in thought. It was strange to think of the werewolf adults in their lives - adults who had seen and done so much - have moments of vulnerability. Stranger still to see it in Bran, a man who most considered to be invulnerable.

“Well, I've thought about it," Kara said brightly, as they approached the first floor. "And, I think of all of you, Charles would still be his favorite son, I'm sorry but it's the truth and you're just going to have to live with it."

Ugh. She was the _worst_. This thought was now stuck in his brain and he knew, he _knew_ he'd end up calling Bran 'dad' at the most inopportune moment. “Oh shut up."

“But on the plus side, I definitely think you have the edge on Sam. _And_ you'll always be Leah's favorite.”

“Shut _up_ , Kara!”

She tossed him a wolfy grin. “ _Make me,_ witch-boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think Americans probably don't have mince pies. Just go with it. IT'S FESTIVE.


End file.
